Documentary Movie Review: The Quorum
The 60’s-era New Orleans Coffee House that Tried to Change the World
May 2, 2009
“Disturbing the Peace” was the charge that the New Orleans Police Department used to raid the racially mixed and politically-charged Esplanade Avenue The Quorum coffee house and the birthday party its upstairs tenant was having. Maurice Martinez and Harriet Ottenheimer re-create this turbulent, segregationist south in their film The Quorum, about the short-lived, but influential The Quorum coffee house in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Award-Winning Documentary Covers Wide Range of Topics
The sixty-minute film, which has won among other honors the Best Documentary Cine Noir prize at the Festival of Black Film, shows the city of New Orleans and the larger state of Louisiana wrestling with the early days of desegregation. Seldom-seen archival footage of state and local leaders of the White Citizens’ League making pro-segregation speeches is used alongside lovely and poignant views of today’s French Quarter. The soundtrack is wonderful current and historical New Orleans music.
The “Private Club” Answer to Desegregation
By 1963, when The Quorum opened, New Orleans restaurants and bars were closing by the score and re-opening as “private clubs”. This move allowed any segregationist and homophobic owners to determine who could become a “member” of the club and refuse entry to anyone who was not. The racially-mixed gathering spots of New Orleans disappeared.
A Different Kind of Private Club
An enterprising group of artists, writers, teachers, and performers pooled their finances and rented the three-story building at 611 Esplanade Avenue. They created The Quorum on the first floor and refurbished and rented upper floor apartments and an adjoining slave quarter to support The Quorum financially. In a jab at the prevailing structure The Quorum was a “private club” also. To join and receive an official “membership card” one simply bought a cup of coffee. The Quorum hosted music, theater, and drama. And, of course, it was promptly labeled as a "communist, hippie, radical hangout" by the powers that be
Interviews with the Now-Senior Citizen Patrons are Compelling
Perhaps the best part of the film is the interviews with the variety of people who were part and parcel of The Quorum. Now in their sixties, seventies, and even eighties, these people were the founders and regulars who create and frequented the oasis of free-thought in a desert of police harassment and segregationist threats. They describe a place that allowed men and women of different races to mix freely and exchange ideas. They talk about a place that accepted everyone, gay or straight, as long as they brought mutual respect with them. They talk about being threatened by the Klu Klux Klan. And they talk about the night most of them were arrested.
DVD Copies of the Film Available
Professor Martinez of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and Professor Ottenheimer of Kansas State University have made the film available on DVD for both private viewers and school and library purchases. The website has links to both sales sites and more information about the creators of the film.
The Quorum movie is a piercing look into a little-documented time in the city of New Orleans. The movie shows that the “city that care forgot” contained both the best and worst of radical 60’s in the southern states of America.
